co-authors are other participants quoted. I haven't changed content of thr replies, but quoted it part by part in my replies, interspersing each reply after relevant part. Sometimes I have also changed the order of replies with my retorts, so as to prioritate logical/topical over temporal/chronological connexions. That has also involved conflating more than one message. I have also left out mere insults.

Russian Orthodox sources from same time (under Lithuanian supremacy or under the Czars) would have given similar age limits.

Resist Meta-Man!

Evolutionary biologists are discussing whether we have passed or will be passing the next evolutionary big step. Resumée of big steps so far - according to evolution:

1.) self reproducing molecules join hands in protocaryatide cells;

2.) those in eucaryatide cells;

3.) those in many celled animals;

4.) ants, bees and maybe now men join hands in hives;

5.) not to mention that all the train companies ruined by Vanderbilt, all the petrol companies ruined by Rockefeller and so on were bought up by the capitalists who ruined them - unlike the other steps one that has really been ascertained.

If humanity becomes a hive, it is termed a "meta man"*. Of which men all over earth, domestic animals, machines, buildings, textiles, satellite communications all over the globe are organs, just as DNA inmitochondria, mitochondria in our cells, our cell in ourselves. The final steps to meta man would include:

a) mankind stopping wars between its men,

b) mankind regulating the procreation of men,

c) the development of a consciousness of mankind, that is really the consciousness of noone in particular, reached by immediate majority votes on the smallest details of things which in their whole are beyond - or are put beyond - single men.

This last step is supposed to be a parallel to the human consciousness being the consciousness of no brain cell in particular, only the sum of all brain cells in general.

But this is not what human consciousness is, man being - unlike brain cells and majority votes - endowed with reason, and it will not work like this for "meta man". The elimination of wars and the central control of human fertility - on lines suggested by Monsanto seeds, that will grow and yield fruit only for one generation, after which next year's seed will have to be bought from Monsanto - this will, if at all, not happen because all humans vote through these losses of independence, case for case, though it could be fooled into voting through the principle or a seemingly reasonable application of it in a panicked situation: no, this will, if at all, be controlled by an elite that considers itself to be for mankind what the brain is for a single man.

The simile between man and his organs on one hand, society and its men on the other, is ancient. So is the simile between a leg that has to be amputated for the good of man and a criminal that has to be executed - maybe hunted down first - for the good of society. It was older than the Church and it was used by both Christ and St Paul about the Church: the parallel to execution being excommunication. The problem begins when the simile, a biological picture for non-biological things, is introduced into biology and taken for the biological principle for a new animal. When birth, food, security of life or death of individual men all depend on the BIOLOGICAL needs of a single animal humanity that is fiction - or a misused concept that parodies and hides the real biological needs. Would you like to be "amputated" - killed, starved or sterilised - because you did not dedicate yourself whole-heartedly to serve the hive? Resist "meta man". Resist the beast.

*Source for the speculations: www.pm-magazin.de the paper version of January 2005 issue.

Tuesday, January 2, 2018

... against a Complaint about YEC

3:39"you'll hardly find a geologist anywhere who thinks the earth is 6000 years old"

Thanks for hardly. Tas Walker and Emil Silvestru would not have appreciated to get stamped as non-geologists ...

3:44"if you do find one, they actually have to fragment their thinking"

You are showing you understand rhetoric and manipulation - you are doing it right now!

3:55"the easiest way to know that the universe is old is the speed of light"

Distant Starlight, right?

Yes, you prove (but it's not geologists, it's astronomers and they are not all that practical now astrology is considered wrong) you prove this cluster of stars with no parallax visible at all or negative parallax "which must be a measuring error" is 13 point 5 billion lighhtyears away, the most intuitive conclusion is, they sent that light 13.5 billion years ago.

B u t if you can't prove geocentrism is wrong, you can't prove even a parallax measure like 0.76" = c. 4 light years gives you a correct measure of distance. And t h e n, you can't prove Herschel's stellar statistics with "main series" etc is correctly assessing erlations between distance and the light we see after distance has dimmed it and therefore not on stellar sizes either ... and that means the 13.5 billion light years break down as well.

4:11 Yes, it was "distant starlight", in this example a star "100 000 light years away".

4:26 If I have any other answer than the star must have shone that light 100 000 years ago, I have major problems, what is so major with seeing the star is NOT 100 000 light years away?

4:35"did God do this to fool people?"

You know, astrologers who see actually the horoscopes in the stars are about as entitled as you to ask the question. A horoscope like "from Vienna, sun was in Virgo and ascendant sign was Pisces" is an accurate astronomic observation for certain times of the year and day. So, you tell an astrologer this has nothing to do with my character (it is one aspect of my horoscope I do know, my granny reminded me time and again of us two being Virgo, she was not a Christian believer), the astrologer could as easily say "but did God do this to fool people?"

And if you answered "wait a minute, God is not obliged to make the universe so that horoscopes can't be astronomicaly observed to not be responsible to astrologers predicting your character", well, you have just given the answer to an astronomer who'd like to know whether the observations he is basing "100 000 light years away" on were made to fool him.

4:39"God buried the fossils to make it look old"

No, God buried the fossils to show He sent a Flood.

4:55"there are major problems with this stuff"

OK, send me a list, I am willing to set my teeth in the problems:

by material involving answers made by creationists

by material I already did myself

by new material I make

I mentioned about as much (ok, not quite those words) to Helge Fauskanger - a multiple Genesis translator, a fellow connaisseur of Tolkien's work, but also a sceptic and an evolutionist. For some reason, he chose to give up the debate.

I have also more than once sent answers to men like Hugh Ross and Fuz Rana, with very little response.

One major problem I do have is the kind of social problem people with your attitude are causing me.

5:15 You know, "college" is not just about "finding out" things. It is sometimes also about keeping your position in face of opposition.

In US (Canada?) you mean early years of university, right?

6:25 If your view of Christianity is so credible, and Ken Ham's is so lacking in credibility, how come you are not getting the attention you want and how come Ken Ham is getting any attention at all?

I mean, if you were right, you could wonder what you are doing wrong instead of what Ken Ham is doing wrong or what I perhaps could be doing wrong.

If I say Luther did major damage to the credibility of Christianity, I can point to the fact that he and his men had for centuries monopoly in European countries which around 1750's gained the upper hand in colonial world.

When Charles XII of my own country Sweden was abroad, he met a Swede who had converted and was going to be a Jesuit. He was friendly enough with him - abroad. But he did not change the law which said that Catholics either faced exile or death penalty, since Queen Christina's abdication, exile and conversion more often exile.

In the same time period Stuart Loyalists failed to get England, Scotland and Ireland back for James VIII and III who would have, not persecuted Anglicans, but simply ceased to persecute Catholics with the Penal Laws. In US, you get history with a Whig bias. In France, it is many places hardly better since the French Revolution.

But exactly how many centuries of monopoly on representing Christianity in exactly how many countries has Ken Ham enjoyed, so you could blame him for not getting your version heard?

6:43 (his empathy for Creationist pov) "if we don't cling to this particular interpretation, the whole thing is gonna unravel"

You know, you show exactly the same thing for Evolution filtered "Christianity" ... you are asking not only yourself, but also Ken Ham to take your side. So, what exactly is your point?

6:58 There are perhaps indeed adjustments which need to be made, but NOT at the expence of the interpretations that are common to ALL Church Fathers touching on a subject, like upholding a "young" earth and a "young" universe.

When I adjust my interpretation of Genesis 11 into Nimrod wanted to fuel a three step rocket with Uranium, I am very careful that, while my own interpretation is not there in any one Church Father, it contradicts nothing which is common to all of them.

I am a Catholic, and that means I stick with Trent : not to interpret the Bible against the Church Fathers.

7:08 Christianity is definitely not falling apart because Ken Ham or I believe the Earth and the Universe are "young".

Fighting Totalitarian takeovers?

"Just war doctrine attempts to define situations wherein the waging of war becomes a moral necessity. It lays out criteria by which a Christian is intended to determine whether or not a specific war was entered into and is conducted in a virtuous manner, that killing becomes a moral necessity. The doctrine was developed by theologians of great influence in much of non-Orthodox Western Christianity, such as Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas. This principle was the underpinning of Roman Catholic doctrinal support for the Crusades, presumably including the Fourth Crusade."

Pope Innocent III certainly thought that the war he was planning against the Saracens was just: not that the sack of Constantinople, which he had expressly forbidden, was; though he took advantage of that injustice after it was committed. A doctrine does not cease to be true because it can be or even has been misapplied.

"By contrast, Orthodox Christianity has never developed an explicit "just war" doctrine, and the weight of Tradition is that the taking of human life is never a morally edifying act, although circumstances may require that such an act be taken, it would only be as an alternative to an even greater evil."

The Roman Catholic doctrine about just war IS precisely that war is only just when the alternative is a greater evil, i e an extremely unjust "peace" tantamount to slavery under robbers or something like that. It may be added that one of the criteria is a reasonable hope to really avoid the evils greater than those of not fighting.